UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham urged calm on Saturday to avoid violence in a Northern Irish town where demonstrators have shut down roads to stop a pro-British parade. The unrest follows a series of judicial decisions allowing a procession to enter a nationalist community, leading to physical blockades by hundreds of residents to obstruct the march route.

The courts cleared the Drumcree Protestant parade to proceed through the Catholic area for the first time in 28 years. The Northern Ireland High Court rejected a bid to block the Sunday march after an appeals court overturned a Saturday injunction, ruling that the previous judge who had banned the route had "erred in law."